20th MARCH ~ HISTORY ON THIS DAY

March 20th ~ This Day in History video by History.com ~ 1965: LBJ sent federal troops to Alabama on the 20th March 1965. President Lyndon B. Johnson notified Alabama’s Governor George Wallace that he will use federal authority to call up the Alabama National Guard in order to supervise a planned civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery. Intimidation and discrimination had earlier prevented Selma’s black population (over half the city) from registering and voting. On Sunday 7th March 1965, a group of 600 demonstrators marched on the capital city of Montgomery to protest the disenfranchisement and the earlier killing of a black man, Jimmie Lee Jackson, by a state trooper. In brutal scenes that were later broadcast on television, state and local police attacked the marchers with billy clubs and tear gas. TV viewers were outraged by the images, and a protest march was organized 2 days after “Bloody Sunday” by Martin Luther King, Jr. who turned the marchers around, rather than carry out the march without federal judicial approval. | & more about history on this day in the video…